Art of Imperfection

Wabi Sabi is a way of seeing the world that is at the heart of Japanese culture.
 It finds beauty and harmony in what is simple,
imperfect, natural, modest, and mysterious.
– Mark Reibstein, Wabi Sabi

Wabi-sabi suggests that beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else. Beauty can spontaneously occur at any moment given the
proper circumstances, context, or point of view. Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace.
– Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers

It is only with age that you acquire the gift to evaluate decay, the epiphany of Wordsworth, the wisdom of wabi-sabi: nothing is perfect, nothing is complete, nothing lasts.
– Paul Theroux

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
– Gerard Manley Hopkins
quoted in the Daily Good

The beauty of wabi-sabi is rooted in modesty that is elegantly perceived.
The aesthetic pleasures of wabi-sabi depend on
attitude and practice as much, or more,
than on the materiality itself.
– Leonard Koren, op.cit.

The underlying principles of Wabi Sabi are diametrically opposed
to those of their Western counterparts, 
whose values are rooted in a worldview that
values permanence, grandeur, symmetry, and perfection.
– Andrew Juniper

For a lovely bowl
Let us arrange these flowers
For there is no rice
– Matsuo Bashō,  Japanese Haiku

If you look closely at a tree you’ll notice it’s knots and
dead branches, just like our bodies.
What we learn is that beauty and
imperfection go together wonderfully.
– Matthew Fox

A diamond with a flaw is worth more
then a pebble without imperfections.
– Chinese proverb